Word: jazzed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There's no doubt that jazz is out, as far as Victor and Columbia are concerned. In the past four months Victor has issued one Blackbird record of Barney. Bigard, which is three weeks overdue in the stores. Columbia did a little better with an occasional Basic or Goodman sextet, and much better with a Teddy Wilson album. Only Decca has approximate peace-time output, with two Gams of Jazz albums and about a dozen Bob Crosby records...
When a Sweet Swing devotee tries to struggle out of the ooze and goo that is Lombardo, and investigate this thing called jazz, he is generally licked from the start. He is seized upon by friends steeped in jazz lore and subjected to Gutbucket Gus and his Dixieland Breakdowners. Appalled by the seemingly mad confusion of growl trumpets and crisscrossing trombones, he yields himself again to the blandishments of the Kysers and the Kayes, who, if cloying, are at least comprehensible...
Obviously, the offerings of a Gutbucket Gus are gibberish to the uninitiated. What the Sweet Singers need by way of introduction is someone who can play good jazz on something approaching their own terms. And Lunceford, Basie, and Ellington are the men for that. A comparison of their recordings of popular songs with the effusions of the Sweet, Swing set is eye-opening. The gulf between Ellington's "Take the 'A' Train," and Miller's is immeasurable. The Ellington band's complete grasp of the spirit of the thing, its spontaneity, its "soul," if you will, make Miller's version...
...times, is a secondary consideration. Earl Hines's "Jersey Bounce" on Bluebird is comparatively unknown, yet it is probably the most vivid and happily-conceived version ever put to wax. So try a direct comparison on well-known songs if you want to find the gateway to good jazz...
...years later she stopped a Broadway show, Sing Out the News, with her sultry rendition of Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones. But her break came with a chance to fill in for ailing Blues Singer Ida Cox at Barney Josephson's downtown Café Society, a Manhattan Mecca for jazz connoisseurs. Result: Hazel Scott has been entertaining Café Society audiences ever since. Two years ago Showman Josephson opened a Cafe Society Uptown to house her art with greater swank, now finds it packed nightly with Scott fans: socialites, Broadway sophisticates, savants-about-town. Celebrities regard her with reverence, movie...